Hi!
> I am just coding a new definiton of a vector and some basic vector
> simplifications and functions.
Interesting idea. I assume you are talking about vectors in the sense
of linear algebra...
How do you plan to handly symbols? Something like declare(x, 'vector)?
What will be the default assumption on symbols? - Being vectors, being
scalars, no simplification at all?
Just in case I'm wrong and you are not doing the above: What would your
vector code do different to the current implementations via matrices/lists?
> At the moment I wonder what vector * vector and vector ^ -1should be.
"*" is kommutative multiplication, so I guess the only consistent
extension would be to use it as dot product. But then the dot product
ist non associative and this extension doesn't work either...
^-1 is not defined for mathematical vectors so I guess maxima should
give either an error or (if "*" is the dot product) it could be
used for the following simplification: (v^-1)*(w^-1) -> (v*w)^-1
I doubt the above would be of much use, so I suggest to either leave
it unsimplified or even generate an error.
HTH,
Harald